


After the Fire

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Romance, and maybe a little bit funny too, another weird one, but maybe a little bit cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 05:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17892104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Darcy accidentally starts a small fire in the apartment she shares with Bucky and is convinced when he comes to her bedroom later that he is going to kick her out. But he isn't, and things take a strange turn when a confession slips out.





	After the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Long time, no see. Here's a random one shot I've been working on this week that I really badly wanted to get out no matter how bad it might end up being. 
> 
> It's late as I upload this, so prepare for mistakes. 
> 
> Title comes from the Andrew McMahon song of the same name.
> 
> Enjoy, if you can.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Darcy exclaims, her stomach doing a collection of gymnastic floor routine moves that would surely get 10s all across the board. Sheer, bloodcurdling panic looms in her throat, mixing with the rising acid and making her want to vomit everywhere. “Shit! Oh, my God! Oh, my fucking God.”

Of course this happens to her the first time she tries to be the good little roommate and cook a meal. Of course it’s her. He already thinks of her as a massive klutz on account of the two bowls, one plate, three mugs she’s accidentally smashed in the two months since she moved into the apartment, but this is a whole other level of uncoordinated, fumbling, blundering idiot. And the worst thing is she has no idea what to do now other than scream at the yellow, orange, pink flames rising higher and higher on the stovetop. The heat from the pan licks at her face, her exposed arms and chest, and she can only think about how goddamn hot it’s getting. And also how goddamn painful it must be to die in a fire. 

Is it a grease fire? She doesn’t think anything she was using had grease in it, but the last thing she wants to do is pour water on the pan and have it go off like a bomb in her face. But even if it is a grease fire, she forgets what the procedure is. Salt? Baking soda? Flour? She knows where the salt is, but the others are buried in the pantry. There isn’t time to figure out which shelf they’re on. There isn’t time to do anything, really. Except die a goddamn painful death and probably kill a handful of neighbours while she’s at it. 

Staring at the ceiling, praying for divine intervention of some sort—anything, she’ll take anything at this point, even a fucking raincloud opening up in the apartment—she spots the silent smoke alarm. If the building burns down, it’ll be because the shitty landlord didn’t listen to her strongly worded letter about the lack of functioning safety tools. Even if her legs were working and could take her to the fire escape, the useless ladder doesn’t properly descend. 

With no raincloud in sight, Darcy, her back pressed to the sink, watches the fire hit the vent above the stove. Smoke touches her lungs, activating a coughing fit, and she feels her muscles starting to lock into place. The fire curls against the smoke vent. Each caress leaves a scorch mark. If she just stands here, frozen with fear, those flames will be coiling around her soon enough. 

Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip so hard she tastes blood, Darcy Lewis, failed Girl Scout, twirls around to face the sink. She instantly spots a large glass waiting to be cleaned and grabs it, flipping the tap lever up and sending a cascade of water into the cup. Heart chugging along like a speeding train, fire heating the exposed portion of her shoulders, she turns back to the stove and without waiting or wondering if this will only make things worse, Darcy, gripping the glass tight, hurls the water. It flies out of the glass, smacking directly onto the saucepan. Deafening sizzles and cracks hit her ears and she shuts her eyes, preparing for an explosion that never comes.

She opens her eyes slowly. Bad idea. Black smoke hits her face and she gasps in pain. Another bad idea. The smoke enters her lungs, sending her on a coughing spree. Spluttering, blind, unsure if the fire is fully out, Darcy stumbles out of the kitchen just as she hears the door to the apartment open. 

She smacks right into Bucky before he’s able to ask why there is a cloud of smoke coming from the kitchen. Opening her burning, sopping eyes for a second, she catches sight of the bewildered look on his square face. His blue eyes search hers frantically, but she soon decides it’s too painful to keep her eyes open and they snap shut once more.

*** * ***   


A knock on her door two hours after the fire fiasco pulls her from underneath her covers. She calls out, inviting Bucky inside, though a part of her doesn’t exactly want to face him. 

When they knew each other in high school, he was the playboy jock who didn’t seem to be going anywhere the closer they got to graduation. Not that she had the biggest plans, but she figured they were bigger than his. Skip to six years in the future and she’s the one working lousy temp jobs while he’s climbing the corporate ladder. 

The day they ran into each other in New York City and he mentioned his newly-vacated spare room, she jumped at his offer. Surfing couches is cool in college, but afterwards it’s just . . . well, sad. 

Darcy is surprised Bucky hasn’t kicked her out of the place yet, but she has a sneaking, ugly suspicion this might have been the final straw. 

He enters the small room, his gaze immediately catching hers. “How’re you feeling?” he asks, taking a few steps until he reaches her desk. He pulls out the deep pink swivel chair—the cheapest one she could find at IKEA—and sits, scraping the wheels across the floor in her direction. The chair stops just at the foot of her twin bed. Bucky rests his elbows on his thighs, his chin on his clasped hands, and all she can think about is how much he looks like a priest come to hear the sins of a dying man. 

“Yeah,” she croaks, spluttering momentarily. Smoke and lungs really don’t mix. She’ll have to remember that. “Yeah, I’m okay. I mean, as okay as you can be when you almost burn down an entire apartment building while you’re still inside. So . . . maybe not that okay. But, really, I’m fine. Just a little shaken, I think. See?” She holds her hands up. They jerk and jolt as if she’s consumed too much coffee.

Bucky is silent for a few seconds, his eyes following the movements of her hands. 

Great. This is it. The moment he throws her out on the streets. Understandably, of course. But she’s still dreading the news. 

“Darcy,” he says, and it comes out like a sigh. He runs his fingers through the short strands of his hair. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to a hospital?”

He’s been trying to usher her to the ER since he got back from work. But she hates the hospital and she doesn’t think this will turn into a _This is Us_ situation. 

“I’m sure,” she says, burying her hands again. _Spit it out, spit it out, you coward!_ she shouts in her head, wishing he’d rip the bandaid off already. 

“You look nervous,” he observes.

“Do I?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, how nervous?”

His lips purse briefly as he thinks of a comparison. “Do you remember in junior year when we had pre-calc together and they put the school on lockdown because there was some guy holding up the bank across the road?” 

Darcy nods. She still has nightmares about that day. The guy never went near the school, but she has some residual post-traumatic stress about being told to remain absolutely silent just in case an armed madman decided to use high school students as shields.

“Yeah, you look about as nervous now as you did during the lockdown.”

“Is it that bad?” she asks, when really she wants to ask: _you remember what I looked like that day?_

“It’s pretty bad, yeah.” Bucky sits up and taps his thighs with his thumbs. Great—he’s nervous too. “What’s got you so stressed?”

“You ask that question as if I didn’t just almost burn down your apartment.”

He smiles, his eyes drifting closed, and a puff of air comes out of his nose. “Right, that explains it.” His gaze travels around the room like he’s searching for something to fill the silence, something to cancel out the sound of her laboured breaths. “I’m not mad, by the way, that the fire happened,” he tells the small John Lennon figurine on her desk. “All that matters is you’re okay.”

_But you’re still kicking me out, yeah? There’s no way you’re not kicking me out._

“Don’t delay the inevitable,” she blurts, gripping her sheets to stop herself from jittering so badly she falls off the bed. Bucky’s attention snaps back to her. His eyebrows go up. “Just, tell me now.”

“Tell you what?” he says slowly, turning his head like a confused dog.

“That you’re getting rid of me,” she groans.

His eyebrows slink down. He’s frowning now. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

“What the hell am I talking about?” she says, straightening. She wishes she weren’t in bed. This feels like the wrong place to be to have this sort of a conversation. “I set fire to your goddamn kitchen! I’ve broken so many pieces of dinnerware. I keep clogging your shower drain,” she says, her fingers catching her split-ends, “because my hair is so fucking thick and long. Come on, Bucky, this has to be some kind of final straw.”

Bucky’s head moves side to side— _no_. “No,” he says. “No, of course this isn’t ‘the final straw.’ This isn’t any ‘straw’ at all. This was an accident, and accidents happen. Darcy,” he says, standing abruptly and moving to the side of the bed. He stands over her, shadows crossing his body from the minimal light in her room. Going to his knees, he reaches out for her hand. “I’m not getting rid of you.”

His touch cools her heated skin. It clouds her already foggy mind. He can’t be serious. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why are you so convinced of your own expendability?”

“Look at you throwing big words in my face. 18-year-old Bucky Barnes wouldn’t even know what that meant.” She’s dodging his question, but can he blame her? She was prepared for getting thrown out of the apartment, not for a poor man’s psychoanalysis. 

“Well, I’m not 18 anymore. Neither are you. We’re adults, and adults don’t pull the rug out from under their roommates. They talk,” he says sternly, and in that instant Darcy understands how he’s been able to get so many promotions. 

“Okay,” she says, pulling her hand from his. The cloud lifts. “So, talk.”

He sighs, a small smile lifting the sides of his mouth. “Okay. Darcy, I don’t care that you started a small fire in the kitchen, and I will not be damning you to the streets. I also don’t care that you shed like a dog, or that you’ve shattered some of the dishes in the house—they weren’t expensive and they’re easily replaceable. You, on the other hand,” he says, the smile widening, making Darcy’s stomach bunch into knots, “are not replaceable. At all.”

There is something in these words. Something hidden. She feels their true meaning swimming just beneath the surface, struggling to remain below waters. 

It’s been like that a lot lately between them. Like there’s some undercurrent flowing behind their conversations. They can’t have breakfast together without Darcy hanging on every word that he says, her brain lapping at each dip and rise of his voice, hoping to dissect whatever it is that she can’t quite seem to understand. 

Although, it hasn’t ever been as obvious as it is at this moment. He wants to say something, but he’s holding himself back.

He wants her to stay. Could he want more than that? 

High school Bucky never looked her way, but he’s just said himself they aren’t kids anymore. 

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“For?”

“The fire.”

“You need to stop saying sorry.”

“I think I’ll be apologising for that one forever.”

Bucky gives her a severe look. “If you say you’re sorry about it one more time, I _will_ evict you.”

She’ll take that bet. “I’m”—

—“Darcy,” he says, stopping her before she can repeat herself, “I don’t want you to leave, okay? I like having you here. I like . . . I like you.” He breaks off suddenly, as if he’s not only surprised her by this admission, but himself as well. 

“Right. Good. I mean, I would hope, considering the fact that we live together—have lived together for months now—that you like me. Just a little bit. It makes sense,” she babbles, her throat dry. 

Bucky, his head bowed slightly, huffs out a small laugh. He collapses a little bit, sinking to the floor. “You know that’s not what I meant,” he says, as if she knows anything at all.

“Isn’t it?” she asks. She brings her knees up to her chest. The duvet droops to the hardwood. “It can be, if you want.”

Reaching down for the comforter, Bucky places it in a pile on the bed without looking at her. “I don’t want,” he says.

“You don’t?”

“I mean, I do,” he corrects, his darkening gaze catching hers, knocking out what little breath is in her lungs.

This conversation has taken a drastic turn. Darcy was more than prepared for Bucky telling her she needed to vacate the premises. But nothing— _nothing_ —could have readied her for Bucky telling her he liked her as more than a roommate. 

“You do.”

“I do.”

Bravery takes hold of her for the second time that evening. She drapes her legs over the side of the bed until her bare feet rest between Bucky’s parted thighs. “What is it that you want?” 

“I think,” he says, lifting himself on to his knees again, “I want you to stop talking.”

She bends at the waist, her hands daringly going to his shoulders. She digs her fingers into the fabric of his sweater. Their faces are mere inches apart. His breath skates over her skin. 

“I can do that,” she acquiesces, “if you answer one question.”

His pupils widen. There is no more blue, only black against white. “Okay.”

“How long?” she asks, her heart rising so far she feels it bulging in her neck. 

“How long?” he echoes.

“Yeah. How long have you liked me?”

The question makes him pause. “Prom night, senior year,” he says eventually. “And don’t ask me why, or how. All I remember is looking over at you dancing with a group of your friends, and something inside of me switched on.”

Senior prom? That was ages ago. 

Darcy’s throat is moments away from bursting open.

“It’s been that long?” 

He shrugs, and the movement lifts her arms as well. “Yeah, but I couldn’t exactly do anything about it. You were leaving town soon. There wasn’t time.”

“And then we ran into each other,” she fills in.

“And you needed somewhere to live,” he says, “and I thought for about a day that my crush on you had run its course, but, well, clearly it hasn’t.” 

Darcy’s muscles constrict when Bucky’s hands go from either side of her hips to her leggings-clad thighs. Tightening her jaw, she stares into Bucky’s blackened eyes.

“What about you?” he says.

“Elaborate,” she manages to demand, that cloud filling her head once more.

Bucky’s chin juts out. “How long have you liked me?”

“Oh,” she says, “I don’t”—

Bucky saves her from having to answer. He slides his hands up her thighs to her waist and crashes his lips against hers.

Eyes slipping closed immediately, Darcy’s arms wrap around his neck as if she has done this a thousand times before. Which she has, in her fantasies, because Darcy Lewis’ adoration of Bucky Barnes started long before senior prom.

And she will tell him. Later. Much later, when their mouths grow numb and their parched lungs force them apart. But until then, she is happy diving headfirst into this unlocked, unmarked territory, her body catching fire at every part of her that Bucky’s fingers touch. 


End file.
